Cenzontle (Pre-order)

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Publication Date: April 10, 2018 ISBN: 978-1-942683-53-7

In this highly lyrical, imagistic debut, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo creates a nuanced narrative of life before, during, and after crossing the US/Mexico border. These poems explore the emotional fallout of immigration, the illusion of the American dream via the fallacy of the nuclear family, the latent anxieties of living in a queer brown undocumented body within a heteronormative marriage, and the ongoing search for belonging. Finding solace in the resignation to sheer possibility, these poems challenge us to question the potential ways in which two people can interact, love, give birth, and mourn—sometimes all at once.

From "Cenzontle"

Because the bird flew before there was a word for flight

years from now there will be a name for what you and I are doing.

PRAISE FOR CENZONTLE

“I know this book changed me. The book itself knows change, how to change itself, knows so well how transformation—vast essential change which would seem to oppose a self—brings a person ever closer to their truth.” —Brenda Shaughnessy, from the Foreword

“In the spirit of Whitman, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo slips in silently to lie down between the bridegroom and the bride, to inhabit many bodies and many souls, between rapture and grief. These are poems that open borders both personal and political, a map of silences and celebrations. ‘You called it cutting apart / I called it song.’” —D. A. Powell

"In this exquisite debut collection, longing twins with inheritance to consider the interiority of nationhood and the legacy of masculinity and exile. Castillo’s finely-honed poems celebrate and reveal the contours of physical and historical intimacies, a feast for the eyes and heart.” —Carmen Giménez Smith